Read The House at the Edge of the World for Free Online Page A

(this bit took some
     intellectual effort), he must have passed out. And when he came round Bob just got to
     his feet and stumbled home. And it wasn’t until he woke up that it seemed to him
     strange that one moment my father had been there, and the next he hadn’t. And then
     itseemed that it was all a bad dream, but when he called Mum it became
     less and less like a dream and more like something that had really happened – my father
     was laughing at the edge of the cliff and then he fell forward and was gone.
    At this moment two versions of the story
     were equally true in my mind. My father was dead, but also, this was a colossal fuck-up
     of Bob’s that we were going to have to sort out and my father lay on a ledge
     somewhere with a broken leg and a fearsome hangover and the coastguard would find him.
     Already, there was a helicopter buzzing about over Brock Tor.
    Then Matthew came in. He had been off on his
     morning walk. It was so natural for him to be gone at that time of day that we had
     forgotten about him. He already knew that the house was all wrong, that none of us was
     where we ought to have been. He came in and said, ‘Something has happened to John,
     hasn’t it?’
    Mum spoke for the first time since Bob had
     started crying. She said, ‘I need a drink.’ She stood up, walked past
     Matthew and left the room.
    Matthew said, ‘Corwin?’
    Corwin was strangely alert, his normal
     lassitude gone, his limbs neatly arranged. He said, very precisely: ‘Dad fell off
     the cliff last night.’
    The familiar face of my grandfather dropped
     away, the face I always saw because it was the beloved face that was always there, and I
     saw him as he looked to the world: old and thin-haired, his brown-splashed hands shaking
     slightly. He remained standing and looked down at those hands, lifting them and holding
     them apart.
    ‘Where?’ he asked.
    ‘Brock Tor.’
    Bob was crying again. Matthew looked around
     for a chair, and Corwin jumped up to find him one, taking it from the writing desk in
     the corner and supporting Matthew’s arm as he sat. His hand remained on
     Matthew’s shoulder. Matthew looked fromCorwin to me to Bob. I
     heard the clink of ice falling into a glass in the kitchen.
    At last, Matthew said, ‘Morwenna,
     dear. Bob seems to be in some distress. Why don’t you make him a cup of tea while
     Corwin tells me what has happened?’
    In the kitchen, Mum was drinking gin. I put
     on the kettle and fished around in the cupboard for tea. ‘Who’s that
     for?’ she asked.
    ‘Bob,’ I said.
    ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’
     said Mum. ‘Give the poor man a proper drink!’ And she grabbed a glass and
     opened the freezer door and pulled out the ice tray and pressed ice cubes out with her
     thumbs as if she were strangling the chickens. Then she filled the glass with gin and
     shoved it into my hands.
    The cold of the glass on my palms woke me
     up. ‘I don’t want to go back in there,’ I said.
    She opened her mouth to say something, but
     instead glared at me and tutted as she snatched the glass from my hand and strode off
     through the hall. I sat at the kitchen table. The sky was thrush-egg blue, the triangle
     of sea beyond the church spire a deeper velvety damson. Somewhere over the coast path
     the helicopter buzzed, but I could not see it.
    The doorbell rang. Corwin went to answer it.
     I heard him greet the policemen and lead them into the living room. Then he came to the
     kitchen, took my hand and led me upstairs, where we lay on his bed. I rested my head on
     his shoulder and he stroked my hair for a very long time. On Corwin’s bedroom wall
     Che Guevara gazed off into the distance in a revolutionary reverie. And suddenly I began
     to laugh. Corwin said, ‘Morwenna! Stop it. What the hell are you laughing
     at?’
    But I couldn’t stop it. Through my
     laughter I managed to say, ‘Che Guevara!’ And then he saw it too. And he
     started to laugh and we rolled over